1. Belonging to a fish family known as the Toxotidae, the archer fish aka archerfish or spinner fish is popular because of its unusual habit of making tasty snacks out of small animals (really small) and insects that live on land.
2. Inhabiting brackish waters of mangroves and estuaries, there are a total of 7 species of archerfish that are put together in the genus Toxotes. They also dwell in upstream freshwater and also in open oceans.
3. Archer fish is mostly found in Australia, India, Polynesia and Philippines.
4. Archer fish usually grows to the length of 5-10 cm with the exception of the species T. chatareus which grows up to 16 inches or 40 cm.
5. Spinner fish have laterally compressed deep bodies. Dorsal fin to mouth has a straight line profile. They have protruded mouth with jutted out lower jaws.
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6. As mentioned in first point, they target land-based preys but the question is, how do they make it possible? They use water as their weapon. They shoot a jet of water from their mouth to hit insects and other prey above the water surface.
7. Archer fish create a gun barrel in their mouth by pressing their tongue in a special groove in the roof of their mouth and then close their gills to shoot the water pistol.
8. They shoot the water jet with the finesse of a marksman and are highly accurate up to the height of 2 meters and sometimes up to 3 meters.
9. Archer fish can be rightly called as ballistics experts because they even know how to adjust for the gravitational pull that acts on the jet of water and manage to hit their prey with high precision.
10. That’s not all! They also have highly developed eyesight that allow them to adjust for refraction of light that takes place at air and water boundary. The optical illusion caused by refraction will usually shift the position of the targeted prey.
By Currentmind
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